


On the Essence of Magic and Kindness

by Ash_Cassidy97



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Autistic Newt Scamander, Canon Autistic Character, Gen, Redefine Magic, Squibs, like im straight up calling that now.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-03
Updated: 2017-10-03
Packaged: 2019-01-08 11:45:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12253782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ash_Cassidy97/pseuds/Ash_Cassidy97
Summary: Or a brief tale of people watching and Newt's loose relationship with spell casting.Credence was good at watching things. Newt didn’t make eye contact. He put his wand in his mouth and was only steady around his creatures. Credence was only steady around Newt.“Are you staying on with him?” Tina asked. Tina liked to bump into Newt and hang over his shoulder, waiting for him to speak. Not a lot of people gave him a chance to talk first, to not bite off his run-on sentences and quirksome smiles. He was too talented at keeping the world away with his stutters and rocking feet.





	On the Essence of Magic and Kindness

Credence was good at watching things. Newt didn’t make eye contact. He put his wand in his mouth and was only steady around his creatures. Credence was only steady around Newt.

 

“Are you staying on with him?” Tina asked. Tina liked to bump into Newt and hang over his shoulder, waiting for him to speak. Not a lot of people gave him a chance to talk first, to not bite off his run-on sentences and quirksome smiles. He was too talented at keeping the world away with his stutters and rocking feet.

 

“Probably. He needs looking after.” They both watched as Newt slumped into the living room.

 

“Good. I have Auror work to get done and I can’t be minding after him.”

 

“Minding who?” Newt asked. He walked with slumped shoulders and a concave back.

 

“You, you work a lot,” Credence said tartly. He hated it when people talked about him behind his back and lied about it.

 

“Ah. Occupational hazard.”

 

Credence spent a lot of nights in Newt’s briefcase, feeding bowtruckles because they were cute and friendly and green. He learned his way around hippogriffs, nifflers, erumpens, and how Newt couldn’t cast spells for a prayer. He learned to bow respectfully and shuffle Newt off to eat something with the same ease.

 

Newt learned that Credence slept under beds or sitting up against a wall. He burned grits but could make oatmeal. He learned that Credence didn’t care that Newt couldn’t make eye contact or reach out well.

 

“You know,” Newt started one day. Credence paused in his sock mending. “I didn’t get expelled from Hogwarts. It just took them until my fifth year for them to realize I couldn’t do magic.”

 

Credence didn’t say anything.

 

“I can’t cast spells. I break phials sometimes to  the trick done and I can wave my wand at things. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.”

 

Credence didn’t say anything because he noticed things. He knew that Newt’s face lit up around his animals. He knew his kindness. He knew you don’t always need magic to get by.

 

Tina was good at watching things as well. She knew that Newt could do magic when he had to, when he was called upon. The tremors down his spine left. His hands steadied. He threw phials, sure. She also liked to cook the no-maj way from time to time to keep her hand in. Newt was strong when he was called on, when he was needed, when he had a creature tucked around his neck.

 

She wondered if Dumbledore saw the same thing.

 

“Are you sure you don’t want toast?” Newt asked her, wrapping an arm around her waist. She smiled, wrapping a hand around his neck, leaning into him.

 

“Are you sure you don’t want sugar?”

 

Newt was good at watching things. From the corner of his eye. From under hats. From around corners and staring down at the ground. And if he must, head on.

 

He knew Queenie was as big as she could be. She saw everything. She _felt_ everything.

 

Queenie grew up in a perfectly polite society. Witches stayed at home and sewed pretty things and married men who would go out and drink. They didn’t say anything. The war would come and go and they would work, only to be shunted back home.

 

Queenie smiled with all of her teeth. She was not her sister. She would not clench her jaw and join the Aurors. She would not become iron. She sewed pretty things in their apartment. She made fancy bread for no-majs because this was her.

 

She smiled and sipped tea and kept the secrets buried in the back of her head.

 

She sewed pretty things because she spent four months in WWI sewing up wizards. Tina became iron and Queenie went home, and wore flouncy things. She worked a sewing shop on the corner of Maple before the war. She joined MACUSA after the war. She wore pink in a sea of grey and brown and didn’t blink when men slapped her ass. She cursed them in a breathless voice and walked off, leaving a trail of fish in her wake.

 

When you hear everything, you need to be loud to drown it out.

 

On the bad days, she’d stay up late and repeat what she knew was true about herself, what wouldn’t be changed by the muttering voices of others who could drown a person if she let them.

 

She’d like to sit next to Jacob when she couldn’t think. He had one of the loudest minds she knew. Newt was quiet. Tina was chittery underneath her calm exterior. Jacob never tried to think more softly around her or try to hide himself. He stared at her in wonder, at everything in wonder, not in fear.

 

Jacob wasn’t good at watching, at staring at things with infinite patience. He paced in the kitchen when the bread was baking.

 

“Is it done?” was his favorite question growing up. He asked his mother from where he sat on kitchen counters. He wouldn’t change much over the years. Quennie made him sit up and pay attention. His fingers stopped twitching back and forth.

 

Newt hands him phials. “They work as defensive spells. They make animals fall asleep.”

 

“Thank you.” Newt smiles shyly at him. Jacob was slower around him, watched the man with his full attention. He had that way about him.

 

It was Newt who found Graves, no surprise there. He’d been left in Graves’ old office, Tina’s new one. Apparently, disregarding orders gets people promoted. He jiggled a locked desk drawer. His animals picked up bad habits from him. It sprung open and a black wolf erupted out of it. Newt lept back against the office door, hastily shutting it.

 

Newt didn’t say anything, kept his eyes down. The wolf snarled and spun around, limping, not putting weight on his right paw. The leg was clawed up. There were splinters embedded in his body, skin partially healed over. He had soft brown eyes. Newt didn’t try to talk. He slid down the wall and sat in front of the door.

 

The wolf lunged and snapped down on Newt’s arm. Newt bit his lip and didn’t move. Blood ran down his hand and into his lap. The wolf let up, jerking away only to slam his body against the wall next to Newt’s face. Newt raised his eyebrows.

 

The wolf snarled but settled down. The wolf backed away from from him, sitting down. Newt ripped a piece of his shirt off and bound his arm up, using his teeth. The wolf took half a step forward and whined.

 

“It’s alright.” The wolf skittered away for a second, flashing teeth. “It’s alright,” Newt repeated. The wolf slowly approached and snuck his nose near the wound. The wolf whined again and dropped to the ground. “That’s it.” He let the wolf lean into him for a moment. “Come on, let’s get us patched up.”

 

Newt led the way out of the office. The wolf strode next to him, snapping at people who walked too close. “No, no, no he’s harmless,” Newt hastily defended when people reached for their pockets. For some reason (Queenie), Congress workers let them go.

 

Newt patched up the wolf at Tina’s flat. It lay at the fireplace. It stalked Newt around the city, pacing at his side. It pranced around his legs and kept a weathered eye on strangers. Queenie threw an extra batch of biscuits in the oven at night.

 

It was Credence who broke the curse four weeks after the wolf was brought home. He was getting better at putting things to rights. Well, it was an accident, he was fiddling with a potion for curse scars in the case. It fell on the wolf’s nose. The wolf snorted, sneezing pink dust all over and fell over. Credence swore harshly, and screamed for Newt. The wolf was covered in a pink cloud.

 

“What happened?” Newt snapped.

 

“I don’t-I-I-I-” Credence stuttered.

 

“Don’t snap at the kid,” came from the cloud of pink. “And hand me some clothes. Jesus.”

 

“Evanesco,” Newt said firmly. The smoke vanished easily. Percival Graves stood before them, naked with cuts over his body. Credence blushed. Newt didn’t avert his eyes. The Brit handed Graves a pair of trousers. Graves slid them on. He was shaking slightly, covering it up with anger. He pushed his hair back.

 

“I’m sorry-about-the” he gestured sharply in Newt’s direction. Credence flinched forward, ready to throw himself in front of the Brit.

 

“It’s fine, I should’ve known better than to-” Newt shook his head in a self-deprecating fashion, but he couldn’t get his eyes to drop. “It’s fine. Come on, I’ll give you a lift to the Congress.”

 

Graves shivered again.

 

Credence took a breath. He snatched the blanket off Newt’s chair in the corner, the one that was a patchwork blanket, the one that he’d laid across his own shoulders when he couldn’t stop remembering what it was like to be ash. It was the one that Newt would clutch when he couldn’t talk in words for days.

 

Credence laid it across Graves’ back.

 

Not everything is magic.

 

Newt peered at them and went to put the kettle on. Credence put Graves’ in the chair. Brits always think tea solves everything, Credence thought to himself. They had a point. Graves’ hands stopped twitching when Newt handed him a mug.

 

“Expecto Patrono,” Newt said softly, willing magic into being. He softly dictated a message for Tina.

 

“She’s still working there?” Graves asked. Newt nodded shyly. “Good. Tough as shit that gal.”  


Graves had two younger brothers. He was used to being the protector. Brian went to work at school. And Frederick had died in the war. Life goes on. And then he got locked in a desk drawer for six months.

 

“Grindelwald?”

 

“He escaped. Dumbledore’s after him.”

 

“Good.”

 

Newt took him in, of course he did. Graves took over tutoring Credence in magic, watching as Newt could only conjure wisps of smoke around him, knowing that Newt taught all of them more important things than spells.

 

Not everything magical is spells. Some things take skill to bring into the world, loneliness, and a drive to be kind. If you watch closely, if you pay attention if you are endlessly kind, you are needed and you can do this.

 

At least, that’s why Newt Scamander left Hogwarts and single-handedly blew up New York City.

 

Several times.

**Author's Note:**

> this was supposed to be a quick character study. Not sure if this is complete but here we go. I have a cannon that Neville will meet Newt one day. And just gah. Okay. I have so many issues with all of this, okay?
> 
> I also have serious issue with Squibs and JK Rowling over that shit.


End file.
